If you’re dealing with anxiety in New York City, you’ve probably noticed how it can take over your thoughts and keep you from living the life you want. Maybe you’ve tried to push anxious thoughts away or avoid situations that make you uncomfortable—only to find that the anxiety keeps coming back stronger. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers a different path forward.
We provide ACT therapy online for young adults and college students throughout New York City and New Jersey who are ready to change their relationship with anxiety and start living according to their values.
What Is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an evidence-based approach that combines mindfulness strategies with practical behavior change techniques. Instead of trying to eliminate anxiety or control your thoughts, ACT teaches you how to develop psychological flexibility—the ability to be present with uncomfortable feelings while taking action toward what matters to you.
This doesn’t mean you’ll never feel anxious again. It means anxiety won’t have the same power to stop you from pursuing your goals, maintaining relationships, or showing up as your authentic self.
ACT is particularly effective for managing anxiety, social anxiety, perfectionism, people-pleasing, OCD, panic, depression, and the stress that comes with major life transitions. Through our work with individuals in their 20s and 30s, we’ve seen how this approach creates lasting change by helping people build meaningful lives, even when difficult emotions show up.
/ How ACT Therapy Works
ACT focuses on six core processes that work together to increase your psychological flexibility:
Acceptance means opening up to your experiences—including uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and sensations—without trying to change them or make them go away. When you’re anxious before a social event, acceptance involves noticing the physical sensations and worried thoughts while attending the event anyway.
Cognitive Defusion teaches you to see thoughts as just words and images passing through your mind, rather than facts you must believe. If perfectionism tells you “I’m not good enough,” defusion helps you observe that thought without getting tangled up in it or letting it dictate your behavior.
Being Present involves training your attention to stay with the present moment through mindfulness practices. Instead of replaying past conversations or projecting into the future with worst-case scenarios, you learn to fully engage with whatever you’re doing right now.
Self-as-Context helps you recognize that you’re not your thoughts, feelings, or the roles you play. You’re the awareness that experiences all of these things. Anxiety is something you experience, not something you are—which means you can have a different relationship with it.
Values Clarification involves identifying what truly matters to you beneath the anxiety and the “shoulds” you’ve accumulated. In therapy, we explore your values in relationships, career, personal growth, and other life domains to clarify what you want your life to stand for.
Committed Action means taking concrete steps aligned with your values, even when it’s uncomfortable. If you value authenticity but anxiety tells you to always agree and avoid conflict, committed action might involve expressing your genuine opinion in a low-stakes situation.
/ What ACT Can Help With
Through our practice, we use ACT therapy to address:
Anxiety and Worry: If you spend much of your day worrying about things that might go wrong or feeling tense without a clear reason why, ACT provides practical tools for letting worry be there while focusing your energy on valued activities.
Social Anxiety: ACT helps you work with social anxiety by clarifying why connection matters to you and gradually building your willingness to feel uncomfortable in social settings while staying engaged.
Perfectionism and People-Pleasing: If you set impossibly high standards for yourself or struggle to say no even when you’re overwhelmed, ACT helps you stay connected to your values while loosening the rigid rules these patterns create.
Life Transitions: Whether you’re graduating college, starting a new job, or facing another major change, ACT provides a framework for navigating uncertainty by using your values as a compass.
OCD and Intrusive Thoughts: ACT offers valuable tools for managing intrusive thoughts and reducing compulsive behaviors through defusion and acceptance processes, often integrated with exposure techniques.
Depression: ACT helps you reconnect with what matters and take small committed actions even when motivation is low, building momentum that can lift mood over time.
Panic and Phobias: Instead of trying to prevent panic from happening, ACT teaches you that you can handle the sensations and that they will pass, combining graduated exposure with values work.
Our Approach to ACT Therapy
We integrate ACT with other evidence-based approaches including Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and mindfulness practices. This flexibility allows us to tailor treatment to what you actually need rather than rigidly following one methodology.
Our approach combines clinical expertise with real-world understanding. Our team’s experiences with anxiety inform our work, making therapy feel grounded, accessible, and relatable. We work exclusively with individuals online throughout New York City and New Jersey, focusing on young adults and college students navigating the unique pressures of life in this area.
What to Expect in Therapy
Free 15-Minute Consultation: We’ll start with a brief call to discuss what you’re experiencing and whether ACT might be a good fit for your needs.
Initial Intake Session: During this first full session, we’ll explore your background, what brings you to therapy now, and what you hope to accomplish. We’ll discuss how anxiety or other challenges are showing up in your daily life.
Individualized Treatment: Following our intake, we’ll create a treatment plan unique to your specific needs, integrating ACT with CBT, DBT, and mindfulness techniques as appropriate.
Individual Therapy Sessions: We’ll meet for 50-minute sessions where we balance exploration and skill-building. Each session might involve processing something from your week, practicing a new technique, or planning committed actions you’ll take before our next meeting.
Between Sessions: We’ll suggest exercises or practices for you to try between sessions—opportunities to experiment with new ways of responding to your experiences. You’ll have therapy exercises to practice outside of our sessions that reinforce what we’re working on together.
Ongoing Care: Once established, you’ll have a weekly reserved session time, with scheduling managed through Simple Practice. We want to be clear that we don’t provide crisis services, so if you’re experiencing a mental health emergency, you would need to contact emergency services or a crisis line.
Is ACT Therapy Right for You?
You might benefit from ACT if you’ve tried to control or eliminate anxious thoughts without success and are open to a different approach. ACT is particularly helpful if you’re interested in mindfulness but want something more structured, if you want to clarify what matters to you, or if you prefer a practical, skills-based approach to therapy.
ACT requires willingness to try new approaches and experiment with discomfort. It involves taking action even when anxiety is present, which means leaning into challenging experiences rather than waiting until you feel completely confident.
Start Your Journey with ACT Therapy
If you’re struggling with anxiety, feeling stuck in patterns of perfectionism or people-pleasing, or navigating a challenging life transition, ACT therapy might offer the tools and perspective you’ve been looking for. We know that reaching out for therapy can feel vulnerable, especially if you’re not sure what to expect.
The free 15-minute consultation call is designed to make this first step easier. We can talk about what you’re experiencing, and we can share more about how we work and whether ACT might be a good fit for your specific situation. We can also discuss practical details like scheduling and fees.
You don’t have to have everything figured out before reaching out. What matters is that you’re considering making a change and willing to explore what’s possible. Contact us today to schedule your free consultation and take the first step toward building a life that truly matters to you.
Frequently Asked Questions About ACT Therapy
Traditional talk therapy often focuses on exploring your past and understanding why you think or feel certain ways. ACT incorporates some exploration but is primarily focused on the present and future—specifically, how you can take action aligned with your values right now. ACT is skills-based and practical, teaching you specific techniques you can use in daily life to manage anxiety and difficult emotions.
Before scheduling a full-length 50-minute intake session, we offer free 15-minute introductory calls with all potential new clients. During this call, we’ll discuss why you’re seeking therapy, and I’ll share logistical information about rates, insurance, and scheduling.
Each 50-minute session is conversational and collaborative. We might start by discussing your week and any challenges you encountered. From there, we could practice a specific ACT technique, explore your values, work through a difficult thought pattern, or plan committed actions for the week ahead. Sessions balance processing your experiences with building practical skills. We aim to make therapy feel natural and accessible rather than overly clinical or rigid.
All individual therapy sessions are 50-minutes.
We meet with most clients on a weekly basis. We ask that new clients commit to weekly sessions at the start of treatment, and depending on how things progress over time, we may recommend that we increase or decrease the frequency of sessions to best meet your needs.
Currently, we offer online sessions only.
Online therapy is delivered via a secure video platform. Online therapy provides all of the benefits of traditional therapy in addition to flexible scheduling and the convenience of participating in sessions from home.
Session fees for individual therapy range from $125-$250 per session depending on the clinician you work with. Group therapy sessions are $80 per session. We also offer a limited number of sliding scale spots to help make therapy more accessible. Your specific fee will be discussed with you prior to beginning treatment.
Mindful Mental Health Counseling is out-of-network with insurance. Private pay is a great option for people who want maximum privacy, confidentiality, and flexibility.
If you do not opt for private pay, you may also be eligible to use out-of-network benefits in order to receive reimbursement for sessions. Often, out-of-network benefits cover anywhere from 70-80% of the full session fee. Check with your insurance company directly to ask about out-of-network benefits.
- Do I have out-of-network benefits for outpatient mental health services?
- What is my out-of-network deductible?
- How much of my deductible has been met this year?
- How much will I be reimbursed for a 45-minute psychotherapy session (CPT code: 90834)?
- How do I submit claim forms for reimbursement?
If you plan to utilize out-of-network benefits, we will provide you with a monthly invoice to submit to your insurance company for reimbursement.
Yes. If you are unable to pay the full session fee and do not have out-of-network benefits, please contact us to discuss a sliding scale rate. We reserve a limited number of sliding scale spots for new clients.
If the sliding scale rate is still not within your budget, we can refer you to other local providers in the area.
24 hours notice is required for all cancellations. Otherwise, you will be charged for the full fee for the canceled or missed session.
At Mindful Mental Health Counseling, we are licensed in New York and New Jersey. Clients must live in either New York or New Jersey to work with our team.
